GOV. PATERSON plans to tap into a little-noticed, $279 million slush fund to “buy” the votes of state Senate Democrats who are resisting his bridge-toll plan and pared-down budget, The Post has been told.

The slush fund is buried in Paterson’s $121 billion proposed “bare bones” state budget and is made up of reappropriated pork-barrel “member item” money left over from past years.

Much of the slush money was appropriated for projects backed by Senate Republicans, who narrowly lost their majority to the Democrats in the November election. That money could now be shifted to Democrat-favored pork.

“That’s how he’s looking to buy the Senate votes – giving member-item grants to the senators whose votes he needs,” said a source close to Paterson.

The governor – along with his predecessor, Eliot Spitzer – was once a strong critic of the member-item system.

While Paterson swept some $1 billion in leftover cash from throughout state government to help close the current fiscal year’s massive budget deficit, he conspicuously kept the leftover member-item money in place.

Senate Democrats, many of who have shown a willingness to break party ranks, hold just 32 seats in the 62-member upper house of the Legislature, the bare minimum needed to pass a measure.

As a result, Senate Majority Leader Malcolm Smith of Queens has been unable for weeks to pass measures backed by fellow Democrat Paterson. Those include a financial bailout for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, tolls on the East River bridges and a rollback of the Rockefeller drug laws’ tough sentences.

With a new state budget due by April 1, the stakes for Paterson, who has plummeted to record lows in polls, are higher than ever.

Even one renegade Senate Democrat can hold up the budget, the MTA bailout, or virtually anything else. That’s because Senate Republicans, smarting over Democrat-imposed budget cuts that have forced them to fire dozens of staffers, are refusing to provide any votes.

Using member-item money to buy votes could be risky for Paterson, because it’s likely to trigger bitter criticism from good-government groups and others that have long criticized the pork-barrel spending as corrupt.

Paterson declined to comment on whether his “crisis” budget now being negotiated with the Legislature should include member-item spending.

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Aides to Smith are angrily blaming Paterson for making Senate Democrats the focus of anger from public-employee and hospital-union activists furious over the governor’s plan to modestly rein in state spending.

“Paterson has been blaming Malcolm, saying he’s the one who wants to make the budget cuts,” said a source close to Smith.

“Malcolm has been backing the governor up on his policies, and this is what he gets in return?”